Investigators who found attackers of Bolshoi Theatre artistic director to be decorated

Earlier reports said a court would consider the arrest of three suspects

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MOSCOW, March 7 (Itar-Tass) - The investigators who found the perpetrators of the attack on Bolshoi Theatre artistic director Sergei Filin will be decorated, a representative of the Interior Ministry told Itar-Tass.

City police chief Anatoly Yakunin asked Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev to decorate the personnel who had taken part in solving the attack on Sergei Filin, and detained the suspects," the police representative said.

Earlier reports said a court would consider the arrest of three suspects. They may be officially charged with malicious infliction of serious harm to health on Thursday.

The suspected mastermind - a leading Bolshoi Theatre soloist Pavel Dmitrichenko -- was detained on March 5, together with Yuri Zarutsky who has a previous criminal conviction and driver Andrei Lipatov, who brought the perpetrator to the scene of crime.

According to the investigators, they all confessed to the crime. The motive behind the attack was "Dmitrichenko's enmity toward Filin due to professional activities."

The investigation was handled by a team of best experts of Moscow criminal police.

"The group examined a number of leads, such as mistaken identity and professional activity. Police questioned witnesses, Bolshoi Theatre staff and the victim's acquaintances. The detectives zeroed in on the circle of friends of one of the soloists - Pavel Dmitrichenko - who was acquainted with an unemployed man with a criminal record," an Investigative Committee official said.

"It has been ascertained that the mastermind and his accomplices had tailed the victim and noted the time he returned home. To communicate between themselves, they obtained mobile phones registered to other persons. The perpetrator bought acid in a Moscow region shop and evaporated water from it to increase its concentration.

On the day of the crime, the attackers knew the time when the victim would leave the Bolshoi Theatre. "The mastermind informed them that Filin was headed for his home, where the perpetrator had been waiting for him," the SK official said.

Sergei Filin, 42, was attacked near his home in Troitskaya Street in Moscow on January 17. An unidentified man splashed acid in his face and fled. Filin wish rushed to hospital with serious face and eye burns. He was initially treated in Moscow, and is now in a German clinic.